CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DAY 16. BEFORE DAWN
This time, all of us, even Courtney, who had recovered from her seizure, tramped through the woods again before sunrise, the tension of today’s mission driving everyone to silence. I kept watching the back of Holly’s head, feeling like I should say something to her. What if we didn’t survive this escape?
We reached the edge of the woods in no time and everyone looked out toward the tents, watching for movement or babies running around like we’d seen before. This trip we came fully equipped with supplies—food, water, backpacks with tents, extra clothing, basic medical supplies—to get us through the three-day journey to Eyewall headquarters. Some of the stuff that Grayson, Lonnie, and Blake had produced from the technology building left the rest of us completely speechless. A portable toilet and shower that could be set up by remote control. It was like being in a wizarding world or magical realm. Was this how people from the year 1500 would view 2009?
The part that Blake and I hadn’t discussed since that first time was whether or not we would execute our secret plan to take down Eyewall headquarters before jumping back to where we came from. We also hadn’t discussed Stewart’s involvement in this plan. To me, and probably to Blake since it was his idea, it almost seemed more likely that we would succeed since discovering our newfound abilities. That was also a good reason why it needed to be us and not everyone else.
Emily had been walking beside me the whole journey so I was the first person to notice her stop in her tracks, just past the forest, her forehead wrinkling, hands pressing against the sides of her head.
I knelt in front of her. “What’s wrong?”
“My head,” she whispered.
I glanced at Dad and Grayson, who were closest to me. Hopefully we weren’t about to see another episode of Emily’s information overload. “She says her head hurts.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” she explained. “It just … it’s loud.”
Oh boy. Loud voices in her head? This poor kid was in need of some psychiatric assistance we didn’t seem to have available despite the fact that we had toilets and showers that folded up into a backpack.
Grayson didn’t look nearly as concerned as he had two days ago when Emily had freaked out. He squatted in front of her. “It’s all the people who can jump. The buzz just got louder, that’s all.”
Emily nodded and let out a breath. “I know, but it still makes it hard to think.”
I looked from Grayson to Dad, and then Dad spoke up, “Because she senses the presence of time travelers? It’s more prevalent if she’s around more of them?”
“Yes,” Grayson answered.
“But wasn’t she with them before?” I asked. “She said Thomas dumped her there.”
“I’m guessing that’s why she had to leave,” Grayson said, and Emily nodded. “That’s probably what gave her the strength to do what Ludwig thought impossible. She truly had to get away from it.”
I scooped her up off the ground and held her upright in my arms. “Let’s get this done so you can get rid of all that noise, okay?”
Emily buried her face in my shoulder, and whispered, “Thank you.”
No other words were spoken, as most of us hadn’t seen the communication box that Dad and Holly had checked out the other day and we were all anxious to see how it worked. The box sat on top of a long, concrete pole like an old-fashioned pay phone.
Grayson stepped forward and opened the metal box, pressing a few buttons before turning to face the group. Everyone else’s eyes seem to shift toward Holly.
She took a deep breath and moved beside Grayson. “Can we review the procedure one more time before I pass through the retina scanner?”
“Of course,” Dad said, because he had been the one to draw out the exact plan, CIA-mission style. “You’ll open the access and we’ll all cross through the barrier. Three minutes after, Eyewall agents will teleport directly to the barrier line, at which time we’ll need to incapacitate them before they have a chance to alert headquarters of our escape. Within a few minutes, we’ll need to remove the tracking chips implanted behind their ears and attach them to ourselves.”
“Wow, that sounds pretty daunting when you say it like that, Dad,” Courtney said.
Lonnie took Emily from my arms. “You’re gonna need your hands free.”
Blake and I were to be on the front line, so to speak, and Dad wasn’t too happy about this; but for everyone else, given the recent discovery, it was a no-brainer.
I held my breath, pulse pounding in my ears as Holly pressed her fingerprints into the gray box, accepting the red light flowing past her pupils. Blake did the honor of crossing the line first, and when he walked through, there was an immediate release of air from everyone’s lungs. I walked through next.
The rest crossed through after me. I half expected the scenery to change or some big alarm to sound because we’d finally ended up on the other side of the force field. If this was a revelation for me, I could only imagine what it felt like for Grayson, Lonnie, Blake, and Sasha, who had been here for years, not days.
Thirty seconds passed as we walked farther from Misfit Island. My stomach flipped over a dozen times, my anxiety hitting a peak. I could feel Holly’s presence beside me and instinct took over. I reached for her hand, tugging on it to get her to look at me.
“Holly,” I said quickly. “I want you to know—”
She yanked her hand from mine and pointed to something in the distance. “Look! Someone’s out there! There’s a tent.”
Sure enough, we all squinted into the rising sun and could just make out a tent much like the ones we’d packed. The blur of a dark-haired figure sat in front of a fire.
“Ninety seconds,” Dad whispered.
“Do you think they’re waiting for us?” Mason asked, nodding toward the tiny tent in the distance.
As if to answer his question, the figure stood up. He lifted a hand to his head as if to shade his eyes so he could see us. And then he started sprinting in our direction.
Those of us with guns drew them immediately, but the guy stopped. That was when the men and women in dark blue coveralls landed right in front of us. It was a flashback of what had happened in Heidelberg, Germany, when we’d been invaded by a greater number of EOTs than we thought existed.
And that was exactly when my panic, my nerves, completely left and I switched on my months of training, diving to take down a stocky dude who outweighed me by nearly a hundred pounds. I got him on the ground and wrapped an elbow around his neck until his eyes fell shut and his body stilled.
I left him there, my heart thudding as cries of pain rang out all around me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Holly kicking some dude in the chest, sending him flying backwards, giving Dad the chance to leap on him, giving him a blow to the temple that knocked him out.
Stewart had gone down on my other side and I took off after the guy that had pressed something to her back. He aimed some kind of weapon at me that looked like a laser gun, but I dove for his ankles before he could hit me. He crashed onto his back but when I lifted my head, I saw a stream of something drift through the air and knock Mason right in the chest. He fell to the ground, landing in a heap.
“Mason!” I shouted, but then I turned my attention back to my attacker, knocking him out quickly by hitting his temple like Dad had done.
Five minutes later, all the blue-coverall people were down (obviously Dr. Ludwig and the rest of the Eyewall experiment team were too busy playing Dr. Frankenstein to teach his experiments any form of hand-to-hand combat skills). I went to Stewart and hovered over her, checking her pulse, listening to her breathing. She was out cold but still appeared to be okay.
“It’s a temporary, chemically induced coma,” Grayson said. “Might last a few hours or a few days.”
Mason, Stewart, and Sasha had all been hit. Lonnie stood over Sasha. Blake, Emily, and Courtney were all checking on Mason.
When I looked over at Grayson, I saw him grit his teeth, remove a pocketknife, and slice into one of the Eyewall dude’s skin.
“Get the tracking chips out and then we’ll worry about our fallen soldiers,” Grayson instructed, looking slightly annoyed that he was the only one slicing open skin at the moment.
Dad pulled out a pocketknife, while Courtney turned her head. “I can’t watch this.”
Lonnie suddenly leaped to her feet, snatched Mason’s gun from his limp fingers, and pointed it at the guy we had seen before with the tent. “There’s another one!”
Holly had been staring at the figure ever since we’d finished our three-minute battle and now she was limping toward him. Did she get hurt during the fight? “Stop!” she yelled at Lonnie. “Don’t shoot!”
I was on my feet again, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Or who. I took several long strides in her direction. My mouth fell open. Shock filled every bit of my body.
“Holy shit,” I muttered. Then I turned quickly and yelled over my shoulder, “Dad, it’s Adam! Adam Silverman!”